Candidates face off in mayoral election

By Lisa Angelucci
Collegian Editor
April 4, 2007

The April 16 deadline to register to vote in Philadelphia is quickly approaching. As you are preparing to vote in Philadelphia, be sure that you’re aware of the isuses.

A Brady saga

Bob Brady, despite surviving the initial challenge to his place on the ballot, still faces another trial after six supporters of rival Tom Knox filed an appeal with Commonwealth Court.

Brady’s lawyers have petitioned to jump the case over the lower court and go straight to the State Supreme Court in order to settle the case quickly. In their petition, Brady’s lawyers cited the urgency of the case and the questions about the integrity of the original decisions as reasons to advance the case to the state’s high court.

After Judge Patrick Toole ruled that Brady could remain on the ballot, both Knox and Paul Rosen, lawyer for the Knox supporters, were quoted in several articles saying this case was just another instance of Brady receiving special treatment from party supporters.

Brady’s challengers contend that he should be removed from the ballot for his failure to report income from a carpenters’ union pension. Although Toole decided last week that Brady could fix the error by reporting the income on an amended form, the challengers claim that candidates in the past have been removed from elections for similar omissions and allowing Brady to remain in the race disrupts the precedent.

State of the unions

Unions love Brady – just look at the carpenters’ union – but Brady has been having some trouble keeping them all behind him.

The city’s largest unions have voted in the past few days to try to endorse a candidate before the May 15 Democratic primary. The Philadelphia Federation of Teachers announced last week that it would not endorse a candidate for the first time in decades. When members voted, no candidate got a significant majority of the vote, although Chaka Fattah received the most votes.

While ethics is not any candidate’s top issue in this election, several candidates and advocates have cited reform as being on voters’ minds when going to the polls.

The Philadelphia Council of the AFL-CIO, which represents 120 unions with members in Philadelphia, also fell short of a consensus on which candidate to endorse. The union voted at its March 20 meeting, but could not get two-thirds of the board to agree on one candidate. According the Philadelphia Inquirer, there was a large bloc of votes for Brady and a large bloc who wished to remain neutral.

The labor vote is an important one in Philadelphia because about 40 percent of the voters in the Democratic primary are estimated to have some union ties. Unions also provide manpower for phone calls and knocking on doors.

Brady has already accepted endorsements from the Teamsters Joint Council, the Fraternal Order of Police and most of the city’s building trades unions.

Who is this Michael Nutter?

With all of the media focus on Knox and Brady, and Fattah’s spot as an election frontrunner, candidate Michael Nutter seems to have fallen by the wayside. A former City Councilman who resigned last July in order to concentrate on his run for mayor, Nutter has been described by journalists and political consultants as an extremely intelligent candidate. He has also been described as campaigning against current Mayor John Street more than any of the other actual candidates.

Some of Nutter’s more recent accomplishments include a detailed ethics reform plan and a pledge of his support for the casino ballot question, which will be included in the May 15 primary election and will ask voters to ban casinos from residential neighborhoods.

All of the candidates agree that ethics are good. However, only Nutter and Fattah have offered detailed plans that address the changes the respective candidates feel are necessary in order to reform city politics. Billionaire Knox claims that he is too rich to be bought, many worry that Brady will perpetuate the cycle due to his connections in city and state government and Nutter’s tenure in City Council was full of ethics-related legislation, according to his campaign.

While ethics is not any candidate’s top issue in this election, several candidates and advocates have cited reform as being on voters’ minds when going to the polls.

Violence takes its toll

In the first three months of the year 2007, more than 100 people have been murdered in Philadelphia. Police Commissioner Sylvester M. Johnson announced that high-ranking police officials, himself included, would begin patrolling the streets in crime-ridden areas. Hundreds of people throughout the city have gathered for rallies at churches and on the streets to call for an end to the violence.

The staggering death toll is an election issue that no candidate can ignore. Fattah has a plan to address the number of illegal guns. Knox has also spoken about the problem of illegal weapons. Dwight Evans has called for the return of former police commissioner, John Timoney. Nutter’s “Safety Now” plan calls for early interventions in the most crime-ridden neighborhoods. Brady cites after-school education as a way to reduce violence.

angeluccil1@lasalle.edu